T. Campbell’s Theory of Everything

Consciousness researcher (and former nuclear physicist) Thomas Campbell presents “My Big TOE,” his theory of everything: “Consciousness is the fundamental reality. The physical world is an illusion, a virtual reality that only exists in our minds. We are Individuated Units of Consciousness: immortal, interconnected parts of a Larger Consciousness System. We choose to be players in the virtual reality game called life on Earth, set in a virtual universe computed by the system to aid our consciousness evolution.… Our goal: to learn from the outcomes of our choices in order to grow up and evolve the quality of our consciousness from fear to love. By evolving our individual consciousness quality from one round of the game to the next, we advance the evolution of the entire consciousness system” (Section: Campbell, 2003/2007, n.d.).

A Virtual Reality Universe

Rejecting Dualism, Materialism and Idealism, Campbell claims all questions and objections are answered and resolved “if we conceive of the physical universe as a virtual reality,” the core idea of My Big TOE. Moreover, My Big TOE “provides entirely rational explanations for many phenomena dismissed by mainstream science as ‘weird’ (quantum effects), ‘mysterious’ (consciousness), ‘illusory’ (free will) or ‘delusions’ (paranormal experiences).” For example, paranormal phenomena are natural artifacts of a virtual universe.

As for the hard problem of consciousness, it is supposedly “solved—or rather, dissolved—once we drop our belief in a fundamental external reality.” The virtual reality model helps us do that, Campbell says. In this view, “our subjective perception is not some ‘internal' representation of an ‘external’ world: There is no objective world outside of us.”

But if our reality is a simulation, who or what is doing the simulating? Is this not just kicking all the conundrums, such as consciousness, up a level? My Big TOE is ready with a “Larger Consciousness System” (LCS) that computes virtual realities, noting, unlike the God of religions, LCS “demands neither praise nor worship.”

From Oneness to the Larger Consciousness System

In the very beginning, Campbell's big conjecture goes, “all that may have existed was an Absolute Unbounded Oneness (AUO)—an undifferentiated, elementary consciousness with a potential to evolve into the highly complex, unfathomably vast LCS of today. AUO was barely aware, but it did have the potential to develop all the attributes of consciousness, including awareness, perception, cognition and free-will choice-making.”

Driven, somehow, by an inherent drive towards complexity, “when AUO reached its evolutionary limits as a monolithic block of consciousness, a single source of choosing, it made a crucial decision: AUO split itself into unfathomably many interconnected but autonomous pieces, a process we can imagine like partitioning a computer hard drive into multiple partitions. The idea was for all the different pieces to build something more innovative and creative than a single mind would ever be able to come up with.”

At that fateful moment, Campbell says, “the One became the Many: the Absolute Unbounded Oneness (AUO) turned into an Absolute Unbounded Manifold (AUM),” which led to the genesis of the Larger Consciousness System,” which provides, according to My Big TOE, the simulations of our virtual universe today (Campbell, 2003/2007, n.d.).